To:D. I. KURSKY

Written:Written on January 17, 1922Published:First published in 1928 in LeninMiscellany VIII.

      Printed from the typewritten text signed by V. I. Lenin.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages533-534.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

ComradeKurskyPeople’s Commissariat of Justice

Ihave received two communications from the People’s
Commissariat of Justice—of November 14 and December 
20—on the “fulfilment” of my instruction to organise a
systematic campaign against red tape.

Inthe first communication you write:

“It involves a great deal of labour to single out
the processes in which this organisational defect (viz.,
the ponderousness and bureaucratic complexity of
our apparatus, inter-departmental relations, friction,
etc.) does not have such a decisive effect, and red tape
is the result of the activity of persons, and not, an
objective consequence of the insufficiently smooth
working of our apparatus.”

“It involves a great deal of labour to single out
the processes in which this organisational defect (viz.,
the ponderousness and bureaucratic complexity of
our apparatus, inter-departmental relations, friction,
etc.) does not have such a decisive effect, and red tape
is the result of the activity of persons, and not, an
objective consequence of the insufficiently smooth
working of our apparatus.”

Withsuch an approach, of course, nothing will come of
the struggle against red tape. It is the responsible persons
who are to blame for these “organisational defects”; these,
and no others, are the ones we must learn to prosecute and
punish with exemplary severity. You will never catch
a saboteur engaged in red tape.

Thesecond communication from the People’s
Commissariat of Justice, signed by Krasikov, and the attached
reports of the investigators of “exceptionally important
cases”—Vyukov, Roizman and Kedrov, a member of the
staff of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection—truly
discover America. These reports, in a pretty illiterate form,set forth standard platitudes about bureaucracy, complexity
of apparatus, etc., etc.

Ina word, it is obvious that the struggle against red
tape has not moved ahead one iota.

Inessence, I have not received an exhaustive reply to
a single one of the five tasks which I laid down.

Isuggest that you once again examine the question and
organise the struggle against red tape in business-like
fashion, according to all the rules of war.

Iask you by the 20th of each month, without any
preliminary reminders, to send me a report on the course of
the campaign.

V.Ulyanov(Lenin)Chairman, Council of People’s Commissars